Nerd HQ is one of the coolest, biggest events at San Diego Comic-Con and we spoke with its founder and creator Zachary Levi to learn more about the changes going on this year.
If you’re unaware of what Nerd HQ is, it’s a a four-day event that happens alongside San Diego Comic-Con hosted and created by Nerd Machine creator Zachary Levi. Nerd HQ aims to give both fans and celebrities a fun, intimate space where they can hold real conversations and raise money and awareness for Operation Smile, an international medical charity that aims to help improve the health and lives of children affected by cleft lips and palates.
We spoke with Levi to discuss the changes happening at Nerd HQ this year, and he gave some great insight into the New Children’s Museum, Operation Smile and way more.
How does it feel going from your previous location in Petco Park to the New Children’s Museum this year? Do you think the change in atmosphere has an affect on Nerd HQ as a whole?
It’s interesting because this is the fourth venue in five years, and I think one of the hardest things is we’ll be in a venue and we’ll learn a lot from [it] but we won’t have the opportunity, with the exception of Petco, to go back to the same space and apply what we learned.
So obviously, we’re yet again moving into a new space and we don’t know exactly what new challenges that may or may not present but we’re ready to handle them as they come.
We’re really excited about the venue for a myriad of reasons, one of them, maybe one of the biggest to be honest, because it’s in the New Children’s Museum not only are we supporting Operation Smile with all the fan/celebrity interactions we do but we’re also, simultaneously by renting that very space, we’re providing money to the non-profit of the New Children’s Museum. It’s almost like a double-down on the philanthropic gala if you will.
Petco was an awesome place but that’s money going to a baseball park, and now we can pay money to a non-profit and it just makes it sweeter. The building itself is awesome — it’s all completely self contained — whereas in Petco we were always dealing with [a lot of different factors] because there’d be a rock show on Thursday night or the Nerdist thing going on above us or The Walking Dead experience going on across the park; [this year] we won’t have any of that.
We’ll have our own contained space that we get to do whatever we want with and we plan on making it as epic as ever. Being out on the concourse at Petco was really cool and open but it was also massive in a lot of ways. We’ve always wanted to maintain an intimacy at Nerd HQ, whether it’s in the gaming area or the panels or the parties or whatever, and logistically it became a difficult thing. You’d have people spread out so far and trying to fix a problem could take a lot longer because they were all the way at the other end of the park and the new location will help us streamline that a good bit.
It sounds like the perfect place!
Yeah, man! And what’s funny is that we’ve looked at every venue in downtown San Diego to try and look for the perfect home but we just never found it before this. What’s great is that in some ways it’s even closer to the convention center, it’s just on the other side. Again, we’ll get to have our own space and have so many cool things: AMD and Sony Playstation 4 are coming in as gaming partners bringing a Star Wars: Battlefront public playable demo for the first time ever, and we got to play it at E3 and I can’t wait for the public to get their hands on it. IGN is going to be our media partner and they’re going to be helping us live-stream all of our panels, and the list of panelists already is so epic I can’t wait to announce all that. And the dance parties! Thursday and Saturday night it’s open to the public, so everyone can come and dance with us.
What made you choose Operation Smile as the charity that gets the proceeds from Nerd HQ?
As a celebrity there are constant charitable events going on, whether it’s charity bowling or poker or golf, and you’re always being asked what’s your charity of choice. I have so many friends that have a charity of choice and they have a cause and I was so envious — I really wanted to have that one cause that I fight for predominately. Not that I don’t still offer my name or time or energy to other things but you want to have a kind of anchor in the non-profit world.
I was actually about to go sing for a Band for TV event and I still didn’t have a charity of choice and I was thinking about it and praying about it and in the course of one week I saw five billboards and five commercials, and I’ve seen them before but not in the same way. I really felt like it was God saying “hey, look at this.” So I did and I started thinking about it and researching [Operation Smile] and realized that it’s such a simple and yet profoundly powerful thing to do.
Aside from the fact that one in ten of these kids actually die from complications of cleft lip or palate, which actually makes it a mortal life or death situation, the other nine of ten might live their entire life never really experiencing happiness or joy, constantly being shunned or looked down on. It broke my heart, man. I grew up a reasonably healthy, middle-class white kid in America with no cleft lip and palate and even if I did there would’ve been immediate medical help for that.
Some kids go their entire lives and they never really experience the full depths of joy because they’re constantly judged or shunned from their village, and I just started thinking about what it would be like to be a child and afraid to show my face or smile. I was just like “okay, I think I figured it out.” I mean I make money partially based off my smile as an actor, and I think about the fact that these kids, not only are they never going to have the opportunity to make money with their physical appearance they won’t even be able to live a normal life and that’s not right, and if there’s anything that can be done to fix that I want to help fix it. That’s why I became an ambassador for them years ago and that’s why when I started Nerd HQ they’re the charity of choice.
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